February 29 Squonk

Abstract How do you get to Broadway with an unconventional, indecipherable, non-star-driven piece of modernistically esoteric theatre? Assuming you don’t have a rich uncle who owns a theatre chain, or who has a corporation that owns a theatre chain. One way is to mount said esoterica in some off-off-Broadway matchbox and hope that somebody bothers to attend, loves the show, and turns out to be the firststring critic of the Times. This is what is commonly referred to as a long shot; yet it happens once in a very long while along the fabled street of dreams. And thus it was that Squonk journeyed to Forty-fourth Street, courtesy of and just west of the New York Times. The eyes of the creators of Squonk were not set on Broadway, as it happens. Their limited engagement in August 1999, at P.S. 122 on lower First Avenue— an experimental performance space, not a public school— garnered great acclaim and producers eager to transfer it; but they were looking for an off-Broadway venue. Blue Man Group, Stomp, and De La Guarda have demonstrated that there is a definite audience for these nonverbal, nonlinear pieces of nontraditional theatrical nonsense down around the fringes of Union Square and Astor Place.